Read Online The Happier Dead by Ivo Stourton - Free Book Online
Authors: Ivo Stourton
Tags: Science-Fiction
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clean hands for Oates to see, splaying the pale palms.
O ATES RAN HIM through the details of the evening several times, asking him the same things in slightly different ways. His story never changed, but it had the suppleness of memory, adjusting to accommodate his interrogator’s variations. After two and a half hours, Oates went to take a break. The eastern edge of the night sky was tinged with the dawn. He stood outside and played bits of the interview back on the old-fashioned Dictaphone they had given him. If he was an Eddy, he was a bloody good one. A bad Eddy tended to give himself away by not knowing the crime in sufficient detail, and a better one by presenting a story that fit together too neatly, without the roughness of a thing hewn from nature.
Often they were too keen to explain their motives; Oates had found that with real crimes, the guilty party only had a slightly better idea of their rationale than the interviewing officer. He looked at me funny; she shouldn’t have called me that; I was bored . Those were the reasons underpinning the most violent crimes he had ever encountered. Ali’s story had practical consistency, with just the right touch of the inexplicable. Maybe for once it was as simple as it looked, and they had the guilty man. Oates and the idea stood side by side in silence, smoking together in the still of the night, and by the time the cigarette was down to the filter they were starting to trust one another.
Oates brought Ali the statement to read and sign. He didn’t ask him if he needed someone to help him read it, as he didn’t want to insult him. When Ali was finished reading, Oates gave him a biro. Ali took the pen from him, and for a second he held it like a poor man holding a strange piece of cutlery in a fancy restaurant, unsure of what to do with it and unwilling to ask. He leant down, put his left hand on the paper to hold it steady, and signed his name. Oates picked up the paper and blew on the signature. As he did so, he felt his nose twitch. Ali seemed to him an educated man, and had been a university student. The signature looked like the work of an illiterate.
Oates took the signed confession with him to the ops room where he found Bhupinder arranging interviews with Prudence Egwu’s neighbors. Having promised that each student could give his statement in the presence of a member of staff, and most of those students having reflexively insisted on independent representation, the coordination of so many people was proving a nightmare. Even when an interview had been organised, the guests made curiously unhelpful witnesses. Something in the atmosphere of the spa induced in them the sullenness, shyness or unhelpful enthusiasm that the teenagers they were playing might have felt. He waited until his second in command had finished placating an irate company lawyer who had been woken in the early hours of the morning to attend an interview with his CEO.
“You said you’d found his diary. Can I have a look?”
“Course. There’s hundreds of the bloody things. He’s recorded every single thing he’s done since he came to this country. I swear, I’ve just read about him having a shit.”
Oates looked at the stack of diaries, and for once it seemed that Bhupinder was not exaggerating. There were piles upon piles of spiral bound notebooks, at least a hundred in total. If it was confined to real incidents, the biography of the most exciting man alive would not have covered so many, and as Ali was unlikely to have carried any with him from Kenya, the books must deal with a period of no more than five years. Oates plucked one from the top of the stack, and read a sentence at random … my jeans with the second button missing on the fly, and my shirt. The stain is still quite visible on the sleeve, but the button which I re-attached to the cuff is quite firmly in place, which is a good thing…
Although the substance was a little bizarre in its mundanity, it was the
O ATES RAN HIM through the details of the evening several times, asking him the same things in slightly different ways. His story never changed, but it had the suppleness of memory, adjusting to accommodate his interrogator’s variations. After two and a half hours, Oates went to take a break. The eastern edge of the night sky was tinged with the dawn. He stood outside and played bits of the interview back on the old-fashioned Dictaphone they had given him. If he was an Eddy, he was a bloody good one. A bad Eddy tended to give himself away by not knowing the crime in sufficient detail, and a better one by presenting a story that fit together too neatly, without the roughness of a thing hewn from nature.
Often they were too keen to explain their motives; Oates had found that with real crimes, the guilty party only had a slightly better idea of their rationale than the interviewing officer. He looked at me funny; she shouldn’t have called me that; I was bored . Those were the reasons underpinning the most violent crimes he had ever encountered. Ali’s story had practical consistency, with just the right touch of the inexplicable. Maybe for once it was as simple as it looked, and they had the guilty man. Oates and the idea stood side by side in silence, smoking together in the still of the night, and by the time the cigarette was down to the filter they were starting to trust one another.
Oates brought Ali the statement to read and sign. He didn’t ask him if he needed someone to help him read it, as he didn’t want to insult him. When Ali was finished reading, Oates gave him a biro. Ali took the pen from him, and for a second he held it like a poor man holding a strange piece of cutlery in a fancy restaurant, unsure of what to do with it and unwilling to ask. He leant down, put his left hand on the paper to hold it steady, and signed his name. Oates picked up the paper and blew on the signature. As he did so, he felt his nose twitch. Ali seemed to him an educated man, and had been a university student. The signature looked like the work of an illiterate.
Oates took the signed confession with him to the ops room where he found Bhupinder arranging interviews with Prudence Egwu’s neighbors. Having promised that each student could give his statement in the presence of a member of staff, and most of those students having reflexively insisted on independent representation, the coordination of so many people was proving a nightmare. Even when an interview had been organised, the guests made curiously unhelpful witnesses. Something in the atmosphere of the spa induced in them the sullenness, shyness or unhelpful enthusiasm that the teenagers they were playing might have felt. He waited until his second in command had finished placating an irate company lawyer who had been woken in the early hours of the morning to attend an interview with his CEO.
“You said you’d found his diary. Can I have a look?”
“Course. There’s hundreds of the bloody things. He’s recorded every single thing he’s done since he came to this country. I swear, I’ve just read about him having a shit.”
Oates looked at the stack of diaries, and for once it seemed that Bhupinder was not exaggerating. There were piles upon piles of spiral bound notebooks, at least a hundred in total. If it was confined to real incidents, the biography of the most exciting man alive would not have covered so many, and as Ali was unlikely to have carried any with him from Kenya, the books must deal with a period of no more than five years. Oates plucked one from the top of the stack, and read a sentence at random … my jeans with the second button missing on the fly, and my shirt. The stain is still quite visible on the sleeve, but the button which I re-attached to the cuff is quite firmly in place, which is a good thing…
Although the substance was a little bizarre in its mundanity, it was the
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